The Royals Upstairs

One

James

It's bloody cold, I'll tell you that much.

I'm standing on the side of a runway in what feels like the middle of Norway, and I've been freezing my bollocks off for a good twenty minutes at least. It's early December but there's already a fresh layer of snow on the ground, and though it's nearly three in the afternoon, the sun is already setting, suspending the air in this murky kind of twilight. My new employer, Magnus, the Crown Prince of Norway, arranged for a private jet to take me from London to this tiny airstrip, and I'm supposed to meet one of his advisors who will take me to the nearby Skaugum Estate, where the prince and princess live, my future home for the foreseeable future.

I gather my coat collar tighter around me, snowflakes sticking in my hair, wishing I had brought a scarf. When I did my research about Norway, everyone always said that it wasn't as cold as the stereotype and that it rarely snowed in December, but boy were they fucking wrong.

Finally a black SUV screeches to a stop outside the chain-link fence, and a man practically falls out of the vehicle, his shoes slipping on the ice. He holds on to the hood, arms splayed, legs slowly sliding apart before he manages to take another step. He straightens up unsteadily, then looks at the ground between us, seeming to have second thoughts.

"Mr. Hunter?" he yells over in a light Norwegian accent.

"That's me," I tell him. "Are you Ottar?"

"Ja," he says. "Would you mind if I stayed here? I don't think my shoes can handle the ice."

I stare at him for a moment. He's on the portly side, though he has a boyish face and black glasses. But the more I stare at him, the more I realize that half his face is banged up. Maybe it's best that he stays where he is.

"Not a problem," I tell him, picking up my suitcase handle and carefully walking over to the fence and going through the gate. At least my black boots have an ample amount of tread, which is more than he has. I don't know why someone here wouldn't know how to dress for the elements, but I guess I'm about to find out.

"Mr. Hunter," Ottar says, smiling hastily as I approach, sticking out his hand. "It's a pleasure to welcome you to Norway."

I stop and shake his hand. "Please, call me James," I tell him. Now that I'm up close, I can finally get a good look at him. He's got a black eye and a bunch of scratches along his cheeks. "I don't mean to pry, but are you okay? You look bloody mangled."

He laughs and then points at his face. "Oh right, my face. Long story. But I'm fine. Here, let me get your bag."

Ottar takes my suitcase from me and then starts the very long, laborious process of walking alongside the SUV, his hand propped against the car for support as he tries to balance on the ice.

"I can just put it in the back seat," I tell him.

He attempts a dismissive wave, but that movement alone sends one leg flying forward and the other leg flying backward, and it's only by the grace of a Norse god that he doesn't end up doing splits.

"Hellvete," he swears.

"Are you sure I can't help?" I ask, biting back a smile.

"I'm fine, I'm fine," he says quickly, letting out an awkward laugh. "Just hurt myself the other day, so I'm a bit, uh, overly cautious, as one might say."

One might say that he has a reason to be overly cautious and that the best course of action is to just abandon the suitcase and make it back to the safety of the driver's seat.

But I'm a man with my own pride, and I'm not about to interfere with the pride of someone else. So I wait, leaning against the SUV, watching as Ottar very carefully makes it to the back of the car and then opens the trunk, throwing my bag in. There are a few more twists and turns and near splits, and then he manages to pull himself back to me.

"Shall we?" he asks, opening my door with a triumphant smile.

And that's when he totally loses ground, holding on to the handle for dear life while the rest of him slides under the door, heels first.

Bloody hell.

I reach over and grab him by the elbows, hauling him up. He's not light as a feather, I'll say that much.

"Tussen takk," he says sheepishly, his cheeks going pink. "That's Norwegian for thank you. You know any Norwegian?"

I step inside the car. "Not a word." I'd had a brief affair with a wild Norwegian woman but only got away with knowing swear words.

"Ah," he says. He shuts the door, almost falling again, then finally pulls himself into the driver's seat, letting out a massive exhale of relief. "I'm sure you'll learn fast. At any rate, everyone speaks English fluently, so it won't be a problem if you don't. Except for Einar, Magnus's bodyguard. But you probably wouldn't get more than a few words out of him anyway."

He starts the car and thankfully the tires have more tread than Ottar's shoes.

"Sorry I was late," he says to me, eyeing me in the rearview mirror. "I run on Magnus's schedule, and that can be off at times. You'll find out soon enough." He pauses. "I really didn't expect them to hire someone this fast."

I give a light shrug, looking out the window at the passing scenery. Farm fields covered in white and orderly forests of pine fly past in the dying light. It's pretty here, I'll give it that much, even if I feel a bit discombobulated about the whole thing.

See, Ottar's not alone in thinking everything had gone so fast. It's literally been a couple of weeks since my former employer, Prince Eddie of England, told me that he and his wife, Duchess Monica, were taking their daughter, Madeline, back to Canada.

Now, I'd gone with them before. Four years ago they'd moved to a tiny island off the very wet west coast of British Columbia to prepare for Duchess Monica's pregnancy and escape the rubbish media of the UK, and I went along with them as one of their personal protection officers. We did our time there on the island, enjoying the much-needed peace and quiet, then came back to London for baby Madeline's birth.

Then Eddie and Monica decided that they didn't want to raise Madeline in the same environment that Eddie was brought up in, so they decided to move back to that tiny island and asked if I would go with them.

I ended up saying no. As much as I loved working for them, the island felt like early retirement. Suffice to say, I opted to stay behind, which then meant I was out of a job. And being a PPO or bodyguard, it's not like you can start perusing the job listings on Craigslist and hand out applications.

Thankfully Eddie helped out. He nosed around and found out that Prince Magnus and Princess Ella of Norway were looking for a bodyguard specifically for Ella and their children. Supposedly, one of the kids, despite having his mother and a nanny, is quite the troublemaker and is hard to keep an eye on. One thing led to another, and Eddie arranged for Prince Magnus to hire me without even meeting me. I guess Eddie's word goes a long way in the royal world-enough so that I only found out I had the job just the other day.

"I'm grateful that Prince Eddie was able to put in such a good word with Prince Magnus, especially on such short notice," I tell Ottar. "But from speaking to Prince Magnus on the phone, I got the impression that the role won't be too dissimilar from what I was doing before."

"Yes," Ottar says, rather uneasily. He gives me a crooked smile. "I can see how you would think that."

I frown. "What do you mean?"

"Oh, nothing," he says, adjusting his grip on the steering wheel. "Let's just say that I'm sure when you worked for the duke and duchess, that they ran a pretty tight ship."

"I suppose," I say. "Not as uptight as the rest of his family, though."

"Right. Well, Magnus . . . does not run a tight ship. Ella tries to, but it's hard when she's trying to balance her children and running her environmental group . . . the palace can be chaos on even the calmest days."

"I see," I tell him. This doesn't really surprise me. Prince Magnus is famous for being the wild prince, especially before he settled down and married Ella. Some media outlets even report that their marriage was an arranged one to try to counteract a slew of bad publicity the prince had gotten. Extreme sports, sex tapes, being a drunken idiot-it was hard to go a week without reading something about Magnus in the papers.

Now, since he got married and had children, he seems to have calmed down. He's become a public spokesperson for ADHD, which he has, and runs an organization devoted to eradicating the stigma attached to being neurodiverse. He's actually one of the most liked royals there are because of how open he is with the public.

"Don't get me wrong," Ottar quickly says, "I think you'll enjoy working here. Everyone is super friendly. Just . . . be prepared for the unexpected."

"Is the unexpected what happened to your face?" I ask.

He nods, looking chagrined. "The other day Magnus wanted to go cross-country skiing. I'm an awful Norwegian because I'm not the best on skis."

"You don't say," I comment wryly.

"It's true. It's like I have two left feet. Anyway, Magnus then decided to turn it into a downhill skiing expedition, and wherever he goes, I follow." He gestures to his face. "I had a run-in with a tree. Or two."

"You're not his personal protection officer, though," I point out.

"No, but it's my job to try to keep him in line. When I can. I'd never let him go off and do something like that on his own, even when Einar is with us. I've even been BASE jumping, if you can believe it."

I'm not sure that I can believe it. "Sounds like you have your hands full."

He smirks at me. "I do. But so will you."

"Princess Ella? Every footage I've seen of her, she seems as calm and collected as they come," I tell him.

"She is, thank god. But you're not just protecting her. You're protecting her and her children, Bjorn and Tor, and they are a handful. Bjorn especially. Takes after his father in every single way. Then there's Ella's lady-in-waiting, and the nanny, and they both take the term headstrong to the next level. Now you see? You're not just protecting Ella but the rest of them too. In some ways, at least there is only one Magnus."

I mull that over. Suddenly everything seems a lot less simple than it did a few days ago. But I'm nothing if not adaptable. I'm sure everything will be just fine, and it's not like I don't know how to handle a few headstrong ladies.

Ottar takes the car off the road and down a long driveway covered by trees.

"Where are we going?" I ask, staring at the frozen fields beyond the trees.

"To Skaugum," Ottar says.

"I thought we were going to the palace?"

"This is the Skaugum Estate," he says. "But you can call it a palace if you'd like. Traditionally it was the summer palace."

I twist in my seat, looking around me at the bucolic scenery, feeling a bit panicked. "But I thought the palace, the estate, was on the outskirts of Oslo."

"We are on the outskirts of Oslo," he says.

"But there's nothing here!" I exclaim.

"Yes. That's why it's the outskirts. Don't worry, it's only forty-five minutes to the city." His forehead creases as he turns to glance at me over his shoulder. "Did you think you would be living in Oslo? The king and queen live there at the palace, but Magnus and Ella wanted a more private place to raise their kids."

Bloody hell, did I ever get this wrong. The reason I didn't want to go with Eddie and Monica to that tiny island is because I didn't want to work in the middle of nowhere again. The isolation was fine the first time, but it wouldn't be good for my mentality the next time, especially in the winter. I wanted to stay around city lights, and people, and women, and traffic.

And yet as the SUV pulls up to a grand white palace, in the middle of nowhere, I realize that I'm about to live in isolation all over again. No more city lights, no more people, no more traffic, or stores, or civilization.

No more women.

Just me and the apparently wacky arm of the Norwegian royal family.

This is not getting off to a great start.

"Well, here we are," Ottar says, parking the car. "Oh, and look, there are the kids. You can meet them already."

I give my head a shake, trying to snap out of it and put my misgivings aside, and slowly get out of the car. Lucky for Ottar we're on packed snow and there's no way for him to fall.

"Hei, Bjorn, Tor," Ottar yells over at two kids in snowsuits on the front lawn. "Come say hi to our new friend. He's going to be living with us."

I close the car door and look over at the kids. They're staying put, both of them immersed in building a snowman. Okay, so a woman is building a snowman for them, but her back is to me so I can't tell who it is, whether it's the princess, the lady-in-waiting, or the nanny.

One of the kids is pretty young, a toddler, and is sitting in the snow, shoving the white stuff into his mouth; the other is standing by the snowman, staring at me with demon eyes.

Oh. This must be Bjorn.

Ottar hauls the bag out of the back and pauses beside me. "Sometimes they can be shy," he says. Then he winks. "Appreciate it while it lasts."

Bjorn rolls up a snowball, while keeping his eyes locked on me, and I'm certain he's about to throw it in my face.

Then at the last minute he turns and whips it at the woman's head, bouncing off her down hood, snow flying everywhere.

"Bjorn," the woman says to him, exasperated, and a string of sternly worded Norwegian follows.